Tax design
Compare tax bases and rates through efficiency, equity, administration and avoidance responses.
Side 241Side Studies / Research
Subject
Public Finance
Purpose
Government revenue and spending studied through taxation, public goods, redistribution, social insurance and behavioral responses.
Structure
05 movesSystem mapV0
Components → constraints → flows → control → failure
Follow policy through incentives, incidence and welfare.
Public finance asks not only who is legally taxed or paid, but how behavior and prices shift the ultimate distribution of costs and benefits.
Tax incidence
Distinguish statutory liability from who ultimately bears the burden after wages, prices and behavior adjust.
Public goods & externalities
Study collective financing where private markets underprovide goods or fail to internalize spillovers.
Redistribution & insurance
Analyze transfers, pensions and social insurance through risk protection, incentives and distribution.
Fiscal federalism & administration
Study which level of government should tax, spend and administer programs under mobility and information constraints.
Keep the boundaries visible.
statutory incidence ≠ economic incidence
tax revenue ≠ social cost
redistribution ≠ cash transfer only
Questions that organize the Side.
Who ultimately bears a tax after market adjustment?
How should insurance value be weighed against behavioral distortions?
Which tax bases are hardest to avoid without creating large compliance costs?
What should carry weight here?
Quasi-experimental policy variation and administrative data are powerful, but welfare analysis also requires behavioral elasticities and explicit social-value assumptions.